


From The Ground Up

by glycerineclown



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Fingerfucking, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, M/M, POV First Person, Rebuilding as a metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:59:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glycerineclown/pseuds/glycerineclown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We rebuilt the Hale house the summer after I graduated from high school. It was the healthiest self-medication Derek had ever attempted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From The Ground Up

_  
I loved our bed. The sheets were soft and cool and smelled like us—not just like sex, but like our skins, like we lived here, even if I hadn’t 100% moved in yet. I had done a lot of daydreaming in my life about falling asleep with someone else, and once we figured out the positions that worked, Derek—well, he_ sort of _lived up to it. And I wasn’t so good at the whole_ staying in one place for several hours _thing._

_He made up for it with a lot of groping and keeping up with my libido._

_I was splayed out, waiting for him to come back to bed. Derek was quiet though, like he was thinking too hard as he puttered around in the bathroom. “Everything okay?”_

_Derek nodded as he returned with a warm washcloth, and gestured to my legs as he climbed over the foot of the bed. I bent my knees back toward my chest, and felt his damp hands slide up the backs of my thighs before he began to clean the lube and come off me._

_“You sure?” I asked, poking his sides with my feet._

_Derek looked up as he folded the washcloth over and swiped it across my abs. “What?”_

_“That everything’s okay. I need you to tell me, I can’t do that whole_ trick-or-treat, smell-my-emotions _thing.”_

_Derek smiled, kissing the middle of my chest and throwing the washcloth toward the laundry basket. “I feel like this was too easy,” he said finally._

_“What was?”_

_He moved up the bed and lay down next to me. “Getting this house finished, getting you, having a pack—”_

_“You think this was_ easy? _” I asked, rolling onto my side to face him and propping my head up. “Risking my life for your sorry ass upwards of thirty times in the past—almost_ three _—years, making sure your damn progeny don’t resort to cannibalism, building a fucking house from the ground up—”_

_“_ I mean _,” he interrupted, sliding his hand up my shoulder, “my life hasn’t really turned out well in a while. I keep waiting for everything to fall apart. The past few months have just... I don’t know.”_

_“Are you happy?” I asked._

_“_ Yes _,” he said, sighing through a smile. He straightened his other arm, and I burrowed closer, lifting my head to use him as a pillow._

_“Good. Get used to it.”_

_Derek shook his head. “You know why I can’t.”_

_I shook mine back and threw my leg over his waist. “Baby, if that were true, you wouldn’t be able to love me.”_

_Derek hummed, dragging his thumb over my nipple. “Loving you was inevitable. I...” Derek sighed. “But that’s kind of separate from—you smell_ right _, you smell like my ma—” He cut himself off._

_“I smell like your_ mate? _” I asked, eyebrows raised. “Have I always?”  
_

 

A few weeks before Scott and I graduated from high school, Derek decided he wanted to rebuild the house. It didn’t start out that healthy in terms of closure or emotional settling, though—first he put his fist through a support beam and ripped the front door off its hinges.

His guilt radiated to the point that Erica told him off for stressing her out.

I pulled up in front after a supply run to find Derek sitting cross-legged amongst the weeds, looking up at the carcass of the house he grew up in. He didn’t turn when I got out of the Jeep, so I put the paper bag of things I’d bought down on the ground gently and moved to sit beside him. 

“Derek—”

“Did you get the water filters?” he interrupted.

“Yep. Got two, they were on sale.” We were past keeping track of how much money we owed each other, and eventually he had given me a few hundred dollars on a debit card for non-suspicious pack business.

“Thank you.” Derek stood, and I handed him the bag. “Were you going to say something?”

“Never mind,” I said. I watched him walk towards the porch, and he paused at the stairs when I opened my mouth to speak. “You should fix this place up.” Derek sighed instead of baring his teeth, so I continued softly. “I mean it, Der. The pack needs a den that won’t fall in around them or remind them that they’re hiding, and you know it. Make some better memories here.”

He nodded minutely, his lips pressed together.

“Want me to bring anything for the moon?”

“Just yourself.” Derek turned and went inside. I brushed my jeans off and drove home.

My next assignment was to find out how to get a building permit, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t cheered when I received that text.

 

In September, Scott, Erica, Boyd and Isaac were all enrolling at the local community college to stay close to Derek, close to pack—their ability to as such not worry about applying to four-year schools or have the added stress on top of finishing out high school didn’t do much for my motivation. It made sense financially, of course, and I wouldn’t have wanted to stray very far from my dad, but it still felt like they all assumed I would stay too. They talked about it like I _couldn’t_ leave. Like I had an obligation to them, like I belonged.

Derek didn’t say anything about it though—but I think that was more about not having ever heard directly from my mouth what I was planning on doing, and not so much about what he was or wasn’t hoping for. Maybe it was his way, as the Alpha, of telling me that I could make my own decision.

Derek’s Alpha form was a kind of charcoal-black and brown; his tail curled slightly to the right and there was some grey under his muzzle and down his chest. His eyes were the same, though.

I found him in the forest after finals, head rested on his paws. When I whistled, patting my thigh, Derek snorted, cocking his head to the side at me, as if to say _really?_ —but he got to his feet soon enough, yawning, and I crouched down in the grass to greet him as he trotted over. He nosed under my hand, letting me tug gently on his ears, and we walked back across the property together. 

The foundation was still okay to build on—Boyd’s dad worked in construction, and we—well, no, _I_ —had asked him to come by and give us some advice.

The rest of the house was getting demolished that afternoon. We had spent part of the previous Saturday salvaging anything Derek decided he wanted to keep, and I let him stick it in my garage for the time being. His basement would be filled in with cement, with a little room left for a crawlspace. 

“Do you want to watch, or should we get out of here?” I asked, stuffing my hands in my pockets and nudging his shoulder with my knee.

Derek sighed, looking up at me and back at the Jeep, before he darted into the forest to find his clothes.

 

My dad was still a little wary of Derek. He knew we spent a lot of time together, that these days I brought him up more than I brought up Scott—and I knew that he could tell when the pressure was on, when I was afraid, when I was out late and coming home with bad excuses. He had figured out by now that Derek was the one climbing in through my window at odd hours of the night to demand things, that he slept over and used our shower occasionally and that the first aid kit in the bathroom was pretty much empty.

Dad raised his eyebrows when he found me frying bacon at the stove, and sipped at his coffee. “Alright, what d’you want?” he asked, setting his mug on the counter.

“What’re you talking about?” I said. “I’m just making breakfast.”

He pointed down at the package. “It’s not even turkey.”

“An astute observation, Sherriff.”

“ _Stiles_. You’re butterin’ me up for something.”

I sighed. “Can Derek stay here while we rebuild his house? The lease on his apartment ran out, plus he’s kind of trying to save money so that he can pay for, like, running water and stuff—” It was a lie, but it sounded good.

“Yeah, that’s probably fine.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“He sleeps in the guest room.”

“Duh. Now, how d’you want your eggs?”

Derek showed up with a duffel bag a couple of hours later, and I showed him to the guest room.

Dad grilled Derek about the house during dinner, how much of it he wanted to do himself versus hiring out. They pored over the blueprint Derek had brought, and after the dishes, Dad took him out in the garage to show him his tools. 

After Derek retreated upstairs, I threw my arms around my dad and heard him chuckle.

“I was on duty that night,” he said softly. “I understand how important this is for him. You’re welcome.”

 

We spent three hours at Home Depot the next morning, looking at wood siding and paint samples and sinks. Boyd’s dad was going to recommend some specialists for the hardwood flooring, cabinets, tile, plumbing and electrical, and the roof.

“My mom always wanted one of these,” I said to Derek, tracing my fingers over a catalogue of bay windows. “She used to feed the hummingbirds outside our kitchen window.”

“Maybe,” he said, steering us toward the appliances. “We’ll see.”

I had spent a lot of time trying to figure Derek out, and what my relationship with him was. I knew that operationally, I was Researcher, and occasionally Unintentional Live Bait. I had tried hard for two years to keep my distance from him emotionally, even though between Scott and I, I was definitely the one with more faith in Derek and his intentions. I had studied his relationships with the others in the pack, watched his reactions, heard him listen or not listen to what they had to say.

For a long time, it was difficult for me to let myself believe that he gave a shit about me, when he had tried so hard to make everyone else believe he would never truly care about them beyond his own self-interest. But once in a while he would do something thoughtful, or remember something inconsequential that I had said, or bicker with me using puns, and I would be sent swirling again.

“What about this one?” I asked, pointing to a cabinet design. It had a rustic feel to it, distressed and stained a deep brown.

He shook his head. “Ugly.”

“Pshh, what-ever, Colin Craven.” I thought it was pretty, and he clearly had no taste.

“What’d you call me?”

“Colin Craven. You’re so sour.”

“What?”

I snorted at him. “Didn’t you see _The Secret Garden?_ Flowers and baby bunnies and rebirth and shit? Selfish children and old men too afraid to love? It was my mom’s favorite.”

The side of his mouth quirked up.

Every time he did it, he made me want to fall in love with him.

 

Derek informed his betas that they would be earning the right to live in the house by helping to build it. They would listen to what the subcontractors had to say, watch how much strength they use, and not fuck anything up.

A full week was spent framing the walls of the interior and exterior—two floors and the attic. It involved a lot of dancing around with measuring tapes, and then the skeleton started going up. One look at Scott gleefully wielding a nail gun had Derek taking it away from him, very glad that we had hired a contractor.

Looking at the raw wood bones made everything seem so much bigger than I thought it would. 

And then, during our lunch break one day, the unimaginable happened.

“Daniel played lacrosse,” Derek said. He was looking down into the mouth of a beer bottle, as Isaac and Scott tried to knock their ball out of a tree.

“Your—your brother?” I asked, trying not to sputter all over him and my sandwich—he never mentioned his younger siblings if he could stand it. 

Derek had a look of surprise on his face, like he couldn’t believe he’d said it either, but slowly he nodded, and sighed. “He was so excited to make the team, especially as a human, always getting shown up by the rest of us at home.”

“How old was he?” The _when the house burned down_ didn’t need to be said.

“He was a freshman.”

“Is that why you never play pick-up games with us?”

“No, I just don’t care for it.”

I smiled sadly down at my lap, not sure what to say, before I grinned and looked back up at him, closing one eye against the sun. “I wish you would talk more,” I said. “About them. I think it’s good for you.”

“Yeah, well.” Derek sighed, wiping his fingers on a paper towel, and handed me the last of his beer. I took it, and grabbed his wrist before he could get up.

“I just mean... you need to be able to think about them and have something good come out of it. So that you can move on. You can’t care about people if you don’t let yourself.”

I wondered if his walls would come down the way the charred remains of his house had—but I shook my head—of course they wouldn’t. 

Derek wasn’t someone you could take a wrecking ball to.

 

Brushing my teeth next to Derek Hale felt weirdly normal—moving around in close quarters, bending to spit, knocking into each other without bothering to mention it. Derek had always felt very human to me, but watching in the mirror as he did something so mundane made me want to laugh, to the point that I almost choked on my toothpaste.

We watched a movie on my bed after that, and Jungle Glinda called in the middle of it—she was crying, her mother didn’t understand anything, not gender expression or hormones or why she _wasn’t a boy_ , but still liked girls and— 

I sat on the edge of my bed as I listened to her and asked questions, and Derek was sprawled out with Gene Wilder paused on the laptop, listening to me and probably poking around in my files. If he found my porno it was his fault.

She quieted to sniffling after a few minutes and switched gears to _god, Stiles, why aren’t you twenty-one yet, I miss you, all the girls miss you, and Rissa says you’re spending all your time with some scruffy leather sex god, why haven’t I met him_.

I laughed into the phone and felt myself blush. “I’m helping him renovate his house.”

“So he _is_ a scruffy leather sex god!”

“I didn’t say that,” I choked. “I miss you too.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Glinda admonished. 

I looked over my shoulder at Derek. “Well, he’s in my bed right now.”

Derek scoffed at the ceiling. “Fuck you.”

If I was out with the girls I would’ve come back with a finger-wave and a “Mmhmm, wouldn’t you like to,” but by some miracle I was aware enough of my surroundings and the fact that I was _living with Derek_ for the time being to not get into that.

She wrapped up the call soon enough, and I promised to have lunch with her soon, though honestly I had no idea when or if it would happen—not that I didn’t want to, but when the majority of your communication with someone is about how much you wish it was in person, you know it’s probably not going to happen. 

When I finally flopped back down against the pillows, Derek was standing up and stretching his limbs. 

“You not gonna finish the movie?” I asked with a pout.

He shook his head. “Another night, Stiles. Sleep.”

 

Scott and I had drifted apart during the last part of junior year, aside from the fact that we both did stuff with the pack. He’d gotten closer to Isaac, which was initially difficult for me, but the thing about being part of a pack is that you’re constantly surrounded by found family. By the time that next Christmas had rolled around, I’d spent more time outside of school strategizing with Derek than hanging out with Scott. Allison was leaving in the fall for a university in Montana, so they were attached at the hip too, like they were trying to absorb each other through osmosis before they had to long-distance.

So when Scott came at me with a _Dude, what’s up with you and Derek?_ , I automatically felt myself want to go on the defensive. “You just... smell like each other all the time now,” he said carefully. “He actually, like, _talks to you_.”

“He’s living with me and my dad while we finish the house,” I said, shrugging. “He might talk to you too, if you tried.”

“I kinda doubt it, dude. He trusts you way more than me.”

I scoffed at him, but in the back of my mind, I knew he was right. I knew— _of course_ I knew Derek was talking, and occasionally even understanding humor—

“And your dad’s okay with that, the whole living-in-your-house thing?”

“He’s coming around.”

 

All this outdoor construction work was giving me callouses that my heavy-duty lacrosse gloves had never really allowed for. I spread my hand out—one of them looked like it might blister.

“Have you decided what you’re doing next year?” Derek asked, hefting an armful of two-by-fours up over his shoulder and carrying them around to the other side of the house.

I shrugged, picking up the toolbox and following him. “I was accepted to Berkeley, but it’s expensive.” 

“Whose opinion is that?”

“It’s a fact, Derek, not a justification,” I said, as he set the wood down and rolled his shoulders. “I’ll probably get my AA here with the pack, and see what happens from there.”

Derek looked around, before jumping to pull himself onto the bones of the awning over the porch. “Don’t feel like you have to just because everyone—”

“I do as I _damn well please_ ,” I interrupted, as he made himself comfortable up there. “You and this pack are important to me. That happens to line up with the fact that it’ll be much easier to afford community college, and I’ll be able to continue to live at home.”

“Where’s that?” Derek asked. 

I handed the first plank up to him, and he took it. “Where’s what?”

“Home.”

I blinked at him. “Are you asking me to move in when this is done?”

“You’re pack,” he said simply. “There’ll be a library, and Erica and Isaac will definitely be moving in, it’s—” 

I snapped out of it and handed him up another. “A fact, not a justification?”

Derek smirked down at me and took it. “Sure. If you want.”

“That sounds awesome,” I told him, smiling. “We’ll probably need to tell my dad about all this supernatural stuff first. Is... is that okay?” 

He nodded. “Yeah, probably should.”

“Good. Okay.”

 

I was eating Oreos with milk when Derek came into the kitchen—he was on his cell phone, talking to the HVAC guy that Boyd’s dad had recommended. They hung up after a few minutes, and Derek looked down at the package of cookies on the table in front of me before selecting a fork from the cutlery drawer.

“Uh, Derek,” I started, wiping the milk from my fingertips, but he sent me a look that shut me up, reaching for an Oreo and spearing the tines into the icing between the cookies. He dunked it into my glass of milk like that, holding the fork instead of getting milk all over himself the way I had, and smiled wryly.

“That’s fucking ingenious,” I told him as he lifted the cookie back out and stuck it in his mouth.

“Laura was,” Derek said after he swallowed, and I smiled back at him, snatching the fork from his waiting hand so I could try it for myself.

 

We spent a few evenings out in the woods, Derek usually in wolf form while I picked my way around tree roots. It was a nice break from spending my late nights on my laptop or running for my life. Derek seemed more muted and easygoing as a wolf, like he didn’t have to focus on as much. He was playful, and bats would fly above us and between the trees, which wasn’t creepy at all.

Derek’s dark coloring would appear and disappear in the light and shadows, and sometimes I felt a little bit like Harry Potter prowling about the Forbidden Forest with Fang—like this was a very bad idea. 

Except my furry companion was much more competent than Hagrid’s boarhound.

I almost always tripped over a twig or got a spider on me or something equally embarrassing, and he would trot over and snuffle at me. If I shoved him, he would gently but inevitably wrestle his way to a victory, but if I pulled him in, he would lay down next to me, let me lean on him.

It felt very much like _pack bonding_.

I’d find coarse black hair all over my clothes when we would return to the house.

 

Scott, Isaac and Jackson (well, mostly Jackson) bought a ton of fireworks for the fourth of July, and everyone showed up, Lydia with alcohol and lawn chairs, to set them off, under Derek’s strict orders to keep them pointed away from the house. Danny’s slightly tipsy impression of Coach Finstock’s _Bill Pullman in Independence Day_ speech was met with cheers, and by the time the sun had fully set, I knew I wouldn’t be up for listening to anybody hammering any nails the next day.

“They’re going to start a forest fire.”

I scoffed, wrapping an arm around Derek. “And here I thought _I_ was the paranoid one.”

“Well, you’re currently doing a great job,” he said, one hand settling between my shoulder blades. “Get some water and food in you, Stiles.”

I hummed, resting my head on his shoulder and closing my eyes. “Dun’t harsh my drunky, Sourwolf,” I slurred, tugging on the front of his t-shirt. 

Then came the Alpha voice, and Derek’s hands tugging me around to face him—not _angry_ , but insistent. “ _Stiles_.”

I snorted at him, pleased, and stepped closer as he loosened his grip. I pressed a kiss against the scruff on his cheek, and Derek froze. “Thank you,” I said in his ear, squeezing his forearm with a smile, and stumbled off to find the cooler for some water. 

 

Instead of being awkward after the fourth, Derek had taken that cheek kiss as _time to get handsy with Stiles_ , and I was far from complaining. His fingers would find their way to me in little ways, just letting me know where he was, like touching a horse’s flank before you walk behind him—as if I wasn’t already attuned to him, despite the stealth. He would smell me, too, and I would lean into him, and his breath would shake.

The pack ended up in my living room for a decidedly _non-alcoholic_ movie night a week later—hangovers were _not_ my friend. As the group paired off, it became clear that I’d be sitting with Derek, and by the end of the evening I was curled against his side on the couch. Lydia kept looking over at us—my legs hooked over his knee, his fingers tucked easily between my thighs.

I’d seen _The Blair Witch Project_ a thousand times already, and as I pressed my temple into Derek’s shoulder and closed my eyes, I heard him hum approvingly. He was rubbing his thumb over my thigh as I snuck my fingertips under the sleeve of his t-shirt, and I was sure he could feel my interest, feel the way my blood pumped and body reacted subtly to his touch. It was undeniable.

I halfway registered that he led me up to bed after everyone had left, and I felt his lips against my hairline as he tucked me in.

 

Derek was flicking his tail from side to side, his ears up and alert, watching Erica and Scott spar between the trees.

I wished that it was fall already—I wanted to rake a leaf pile and lay in it. I settled for plucking a maple leaf from a nearby branch, spinning it between my fingertips before scrambling onto a boulder to sit.

The wolf growled when Erica blocked a hit wrong, but she quickly corrected it and surged forward to deliver another punch. She and Scott were both seasoned fighters now, and when Erica backed him up against a tree, he did some kind of impressive backflip maneuver.

It wasn’t the right choice, though, as he would soon realize—her claws got a better grip on Scott’s jeans than his ankles, and he hit the ground in his tightey-whiteys, his cheeks flushing red with embarrassment as Erica held his pants above her head triumphantly. 

I hit the ground in a different way.

 

My eyes opened to the light coming through the trees. Derek was in basketball shorts now, kneeling on the forest floor beside me, his human hands on my chest and shoulder.

“Hey,” I said, clearing my throat. “What—what happened?”

“You fell backwards off that rock laughing at Scott and hit your head,” he said, exasperated, but still holding back mirth.

“Yeah, thanks a lot, dude,” Scott added from behind him—he had his jeans back on. I had probably diverted the attention from him though, so I would take the thanks without sarcasm.

“I don’t think you have a concussion.” Derek touched the sides of my face gently, studying my eyes until he nodded and helped me up, brushing dirt off of the back of my shirt. I stumbled a little and steadied myself in the cage of his arms—which had immediately surrounded me.

I may have let my hands and eyes linger on his skin for longer than was strictly necessary.

 

After getting fully-clothed again and wrapping things up with the pack, Derek drove the Jeep back home. 

I sighed in the passenger seat, rubbing my face as we pulled into the driveway. “Thank you for not taking me to the hospital.”

“Why? I don’t really care about financial cost or your father’s stress level—you don’t heal the way we do. I’ll take you if I need to.” He parked the Jeep beside the empty space my dad’s cruiser would take up later, and yanked back on the emergency brake.

“I know, I just mean...” _Hospitals always remind me of my mom._

Derek’s lips pressed together.

“At Lydia’s birthday party in sophomore year, when the punch got spiked? I had this vision of my father, still in his funeral suit, drunk and yelling, that I had killed my mother, and now I’m killing him, and he’d just lost his job because of me, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that, you know? I mean, I’m sure I was a stressful kid to raise, but—”

“That was a hallucination, Stiles.”

“But it _came from my fears_ , Derek, I—”

“I allowed the woman that would murder my entire family to seduce me and I gave her the information she needed to _end_ us,” Derek said, shaking his head. “You don’t get to blame yourself for _cancer_. Sometimes wolfsbane... in that form, I mean, _it’s not like a boggart, Stiles_.”

“ _You read those books?_ ”

“Laura made me.” Derek sighed, putting his hands up. “But it’s... they’re not like dreams, they don’t have to come from your psyche—wolfsbane can be cruel. It’s not your fault.”

“You’re not going to make me feel better about this, Remus Lupin,” I said, reaching for the handle on the passenger door. “Let’s go inside. I’m cold.”

I had to wait for Derek to unlock the front door to the house—I’d forgotten he would have my keys. He ushered me inside, and I toed my shoes off immediately, padding into the kitchen.

Derek had left a hoodie on one of the chairs around the dinner table, and I pulled it over my head before I could talk myself out of it, sinking heavily into the chair. He sat down adjacent from me, and I folded my arms on the tabletop and rested my cheek on them, looking up at him. Derek was quiet, and for once, I didn’t feel like saying anything, other than how much I wished I was touching him.

“This looks good on you,” he said finally, and his fingers reached out to tug on the sleeve of the sweatshirt I was wearing. “Smells good on you.”

That was as much of a go-ahead as I had ever heard—I smiled at him tiredly, standing, and seated myself sideways in Derek’s lap. I felt his hands slide around my waist and over my thighs automatically, holding me to him, and I relaxed into his body, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pressing my nose against his temple, just breathing. 

He smelled like the American Crew stuff that he put in his hair—there was a bottle of it upstairs on the bathroom counter—and like the forest, and soft leather, and the pack. I let my eyes close and his hands draw me in tighter, and pressed a kiss to his hair without even thinking about it—maybe the intimacy had gone to my head. Derek responded by tucking his nose under my jaw and inhaling, his scruff scratching over the skin on my neck. 

I tried to will away the reaction in my pants, but Derek’s presence was always a little overwhelming—and when he was through, he pulled back again to rest our heads together. 

The damage was already done. There’d be no fooling a werewolf.

Silence had always made the time drag in my head, so I don’t know how long we sat like that before I finally spoke.

“I want you to know, I—” I sighed into his ear. “Besides the obvious, I really like having you here.” 

“In your kitchen?” he asked dryly.

“In my life, asshole. You know that.” Derek chuckled as he turned his head to meet my eyes, and I worked my thumb over the scruff on his cheek. “I’m not sorry that you complicate everything for me. But if you say something self-deprecating instead of kissing me right now, I swear to god, Derek...”

“What’re you gonna do?” he asked with a small smile, his eyes flicking down to my mouth and back up.

My jaw dropped open. “You really want to find out? Draw out all this for another few months?”

“Oh, I expect you’d be more forward than that.” He fixed me with a hard look and shook his head, and then his lips were on mine.

It was fairly chaste at first, until I sighed into Derek’s mouth and opened for him, and then his tongue was sliding into my mouth, and his hands were digging into my hip and thigh. He slowed after a few seconds though, shifting back to something more reverent, loosening his grip and taking my bottom lip into his mouth. I slid my fingers into his hair then, and Derek whined a little, worrying my skin with his teeth and pulling back to peck my lips once, twice more.

“Goddamn,” I said, smiling against his stubble as he tucked his face into my neck. “That’s more like it.”

Derek smirked and rubbed his hand up and down my thigh. “You’re way too good for me, Stiles.”

“What’d I say about self-deprecating?” I admonished softly, closing my eyes with his touch.

“I already kissed you,” he replied, petulant, pressing another to my jaw. “Which, by your rules, means that I can question what I deserve all I want.”

“I guess I need to come up with a list of those rules, then, if you’re so willing to follow them.” 

Derek just hummed into my skin. “Don’t count on it.”

I ignored that, looking to the clock on the microwave. “Speaking of rules, my dad will be home soon,” I said, and curled my fingers in his hair. “Let’s move this party elsewhere.”

 

Riding around in the Jeep the next day, I couldn’t keep my grin off. Dad had wanted us to run to the store on our way out to work on the house, and I kept looking over at Derek in the passenger seat, who looked closer to beaming than brooding, which I counted as a point.

“What’re we gonna tell the others?” I asked as we pulled into the parking lot. 

“I’m sure they already know.”

“Are you my... _boyfriend_ now?”

“You think werewolves can sustain casual relationships with humans, with all their secrets? It doesn’t work.”

I hummed, parking the Jeep halfway to the entrance. “So we’re in this for the long haul.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“You better not turn around and give me any of that _you’ll be in danger if the wrong people know I care about you_ bullshit. I’ve been in danger every day for the past two and a half years. If we’re gonna do this, I need you to promise me you’ll—”

He pulled me in then, by the back of my neck, and shut me up with a kiss. “I’ll be right here, Stiles,” he said, his fingers dragging over my scalp. 

I nodded, leaning in for another. “Good.”

Derek grabbed a basket as we went inside. I found the things Dad needed—mostly toiletries and picking up a prescription—and then Derek turned toward Feminine Hygiene. He raised his eyebrows at me as he reached for lubricant and a box of condoms, and tossed them in the basket.

“Can you even transfer diseases?” I asked, leaning on a shelf until I noticed that it was teeming with tampons.

“No, but sometimes easy cleanup is important.”

“For what, a quickie in the men’s room?”

He smirked, smacking my ass. “You never know.” 

I bit my lip, fistpumping as Derek walked away, and when he looked back over his shoulder, I spun around, scratching the back of my head. 

And there was my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Williams, standing at the front of the aisle. My eyes widened in horror, and I ran to catch up with my favorite sexy werewolf.

 

Showering with Derek was _awesome_. High-occupancy showering had always seemed like the kind of thing that would be way better in theory than in reality, but washing a hard day’s work off our bodies and stretching our muscles and _naked Derek_ and _kissing naked Derek_ and water and hands and shampoo—yeah. Awesome.

Sprawling out on my bed in our underwear wasn’t half bad either—Derek’s briefs didn’t leave much to the imagination. He was working beard burn into my neck and I had a leg around his waist, arching and rubbing against him, my hands in his hair.

Derek paused in his assault on my throat to lave his tongue over the marks he’d made, and I was so hard it hurt. When I complained, he nodded, his fingers trailing down my torso. Derek hummed and rose to his knees on the bed, between my legs. He sat back on his haunches to consider my pliant form. 

“I think that...” he started, tucking his fingers into the waistband of my underwear, “I need to hear what you sound like when you get blown.”

My eyes may as well have rolled back in my head. “Ohhhh my god, please, Derek,” I said, petting his arms. “Yes.”

A grin twisted its way onto his face, and he pulled my briefs down my thighs. “How bad do you want it?”

My pride could go fuck itself. “Oh, yes, Derek, please, please with a motherfuckin’ cherry on top, Derek, suck my c—”

And he threw the cotton aside and ran his tongue up my dick, and I let out a shout that would have woken the whole house if anyone had been there. Hands settled over my hips, holding them down, sliding over my belly and scratching gently through my happy trail. 

I wanted to reach out and touch his hair when he pulled me into his mouth. Looking down to find his cheeks hollowed and watch his eyes open, blood-red, though, had me thinking twice. Through the thrill of being able to send him wild with my many charms, I felt a flash of fear about Derek’s teeth and my junk, but he blinked back to grey-green quickly and gripped my hand.

He was paying attention. It cemented everything.

I let my eyes close, twining my fingers with his. He moved back to suck on just the head after that, using his tongue in a way that had me rendered entirely helpless, and I moaned when he took me out of his mouth and kissed across my thigh.

“Taste _so_ good,” he said softly against my skin, his breath and stubble tickling as he nuzzled against my balls. “Can I finger you while I do this?”

“Holy fuck, Derek—” I gasped, and brought my other hand down to work into his hair. “What—when you’ve got me like this—you don’t have to _ask_ something like that.”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, yeah, okay, but I just mean, I’d do any-fucking-thing you’d want me to right now.”

He looked up and smiled, letting go of my hand and reaching for the lube we’d bought. “I’ll file that information away for future reference.”

I hummed at him and tugged on his hair gently. “Just... watch the claws,” I said, and Derek nodded, lubing up two fingers.

“You trust me too much,” he murmured, before he ran his tongue over my hipbone. 

I chuckled, looking down at Derek until he met my eyes. “I think I trust you just the right amount.”

His fingers tucked behind my balls, and pressed right up against my entrance. The lube was warm, felt good on my skin—Derek started massaging with one fingertip before he finally slid inside. I threw my head back and cringed through the initial burn, until I realized I was smiling, until my body started humming, like he’d flipped a switch. Derek made a pleased sort of grumble in return, and ran his tongue up my cock again, slowly easing his finger out of my ass at the same time. This was so much better than anything I had done to myself. When he pushed back inside I whimpered, and on the third thrust, Derek had me so deep in his mouth that his nose was pressing against my pubes.

I rocked on his finger, dazed. “ _Christ_ , Derek,” I said through a sigh, sinking my hands into his hair. “More.”

I hissed sharply as Derek added a second, but adapted easily enough—until he brushed against some kind of beautiful and—and then Derek was pulling back, eyes watering, and I was apologizing, trying to wrap my arms around him, and he was batting my hands away and getting back to work.

Derek’s mouth, Derek’s _everything_ was a fucking paradise. 

I’m sure he wanted to smack the smug grin right off my face.

 

Scott did too.

“I can’t believe _you’re having sex with my Alpha!_ ”

“And it’s your business _why?_ ”

“Because you’re supposed to tell me this stuff! And because it’s _Derek_.” I guess Scott had told me _every detail_ when he and Allison first got together, but something about Derek and I felt more about centering ourselves than _scoring_. Unless I was kidding myself.

“Maybe I thought it would be like telling you about your _mom’s_ sex life.”

“Ew!”

“Exactly.”

“No, Stiles—ugh, what? I mean... how did this even happen?”

“I don’t know, Scott, we just—we kind of get each other, you know? I don’t know why, not a fuckin’ clue.”

Scott sighed. “This is so weird.” 

“What, you think I don’t think it’s weird? He’s my Alpha too, y’know.”

“Is that okay?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “He doesn’t, like, take adv—”

“Do you _know him?_ Or me, for that matter?”

Scott laughed. “I guess. Well, maybe he won’t be such a grump anymore, now that he’s getting some.”

Somehow I doubted it.

 

“Stiles.”

I grunted into my pillow.

“Stiles, get up.”

“Wuh,” I replied, pulling the other pillow over my head.

Derek sighed. “We’re supposed to meet Mr. Boyd in a half hour. Remember? Get up, now.”

“Mmkay,” I said, dreamy and noncommittal.

“ _Oh my god_ ,” he muttered, climbing onto my bed and straddling my back—yep, now I was awake, and my morning wood was also quite interested in this turn of events. 

I snorted into the pillow, and when I started to turn over, he lifted his ass up until I was on my back. 

“G’morning, sourwolf,” I said, blinking my eyes into focus. He was fully dressed, his jeans rough above the waist of my pajama pants.

Derek sat back down slowly, leisurely, right against my hips like he knew exactly what he was doing to me. My jaw dropped open, and I slid my hands up his thighs. Having him ride me was immediately put on the list of Desired Orgasm Methods feat. Derek Hale, alongside _roleplay: spanking_ and—

He raised his eyebrows like he had read my mind, and smiled crookedly. “What else is on that list?”

_Fuck._

And with that, he slid off the bed, tossed my pillow on the floor, and left the room.

 

I suppose I should be grateful that the largest injury I managed to sustain that summer aside from sore muscles and falling off of a rock was slamming a hammer into my thumb—blood filled in under my thumbnail until it turned blue. 

Derek had been at my side in an instant when it happened, rubbing my shoulders as I swore heavily. He smiled into the back of my neck. “Can’t leave you alone for more than five minutes, can I?”

“Oh, shut up, Derek, I know what I’m doing.”

WebMD said I would need to drain it if there was too much pressure. At least _subungual hematoma_ seemed menacing as a title, and a lot less stupid than _I hit myself with a hammer_.

Derek heated up a paperclip with a lighter that night the way YouTube said to, and burned a hole in my thumbnail to let it drain. Scott was thrilled by this medical endeavor, his eyes wide as he watched blood come out in a gush initially, and then in droplets as Derek and I pushed the rest out onto Kleenex.

I was more concerned with the kind of bedside manner that Derek had achieved. I had seen him patch up the pack before, of course, and me several times with much worse injuries than this, at least for changing bandages on anything Deaton had done. He had always had a surprisingly soft way of speaking beside his gruff exterior, and somehow made me feel completely okay with him _burning a hole_ through my thumbnail.

_It won’t hurt, nails are like your hair, it’s the skin around them that’s painful_.

Maybe I could get him to play Doctor.

 

“I could hear you jerking off last night,” he breathed in my ear on the morning of the full moon, as I sat at the table with a glass of orange juice. I was immediately glad I hadn’t been in the middle of swallowing, and felt myself blush, leaning into his cheek kiss. “What were you thinking about?” he asked.

“You,” I replied softly, and ran my fingers over his stubble. “We could have fun with that, you know—like one-way phone sex, or—”

I turned to meet his lips, and Derek kissed me through a grin. “What would you say?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said as he moved my chair back from the table to straddle my lap. “Maybe... how much I love your awesome body, how sexy it is that you can carry me around with my legs around your waist like I weigh nothing,” I told him softly, gripping my fingers high on Derek’s thighs. “That I love when you mark me like you’re proud that I’m yours, and how much I want your tongue and your fingers and your cock in my ass over and over—”

Derek grunted something unintelligible then, cutting me off and fitting his hand over my straining dick. “Fuck, Stiles,” he growled, and tugged on my earlobe with his teeth. “You can’t say shit like that to me on the moon.”

Oh, I would capitalize on this—I snickered at him, grinding my hips up into his hand. “And if I said I wasn’t teasing?” 

“The rational part of me says I’d rather fuck you for the first time when I’ve got a clearer head,” he said, like it was a great effort on his part, and scraped his human teeth against the skin of my neck. When I groaned under his attention, Derek began sucking a fresh hickey there.

“What does the wolf say?” I asked, wrapping my arms around his neck to hold him to me.

Derek laved his tongue over the mark he’d left. “That we’re gonna have to take this upstairs.” When I muttered _I want you to_ , he kissed his way to my ear. “You sure about that?”

I nodded definitively. “Hell yeah.”

Derek stood, picking me up by my ass until I wrapped myself around him. We struggled a bit to not knock any picture frames off the walls as Derek walked us up the stairs, and I was laughing the whole way, mouthing at his skin, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

Derek laid me out on my bed and crawled over me, rucking my t-shirt up and kissing at my stomach before tugging the fabric over my head. He was hazy and attentive, his fingers everywhere—his lips sealed over my left nipple as he let his hips fall between my parted thighs, and I dug my fingers into his hair. 

“Derek,” I panted as he reached for my belt. “Drawer.” 

I had shimmied blearily out of my jeans by the time he returned with lube, and went to work on Derek’s fly. 

“We have a couple of hours,” I said through a kiss, pulling his jeans past his thighs until all four of our hands were busy getting them off of him. I swore softly as Derek lined his cock up with mine again, and I stripped him of his shirt, rolling my hips against him.

“What do you want, Stiles,” he asked in my ear, sliding his fingertips under the elastic of my briefs and between the cheeks of my ass, pressing the pad of one finger against my hole.

I shuddered slightly, my jaw dropping open. I knew exactly what I wanted. “Ungh, god, Derek, fuck me.”

He let out a gravelly hum in response and pulled my underwear down my legs. “Ask and ye shall receive.”

 

Derek was half-naked and asleep on top of me when we heard Dad’s patrol car enter the driveway and the garage door open. He perked up a little and grumbled, stretching and looking around for the rest of his clothes. “Shit.”

He handed me my shirt, which I put on, sitting up lazily. “Ugh, dude, just shift. Don’t worry about it.” I leaned over the side of the bed, grabbing my laptop from the floor, and let my eyes wander across his skin as Derek tugged his boxers off, shoving them and the lube under the blankets and pressing a kiss to my neck before shifting.

Dad knocked on my doorjamb while I was pretending to play Solitaire, Derek’s chin resting on my ankle.

“There’s... a wolf in your room,” he said.

Derek looked up, his tongue lolling out, and I wiggled my toes. “Uh.” I paused too long. “He followed me home! Can I keep him?” _Nice save. Play it cool._

“Son... these are very dangerous animals, are you sure—”

“Dad, he’s friendly,” I said, sitting up further to skritch between Derek’s ears. “You can pet him.”

Stepping forward, Dad held his hand out carefully, and I smiled as Derek sniffed him, before wagging his tail and panting for full effect. My dad smirked, stroking Derek’s neck. “Wow. Alright. Just... be careful. Why couldn’t you find a _Labrador_ , Stiles?”

Derek let out an offended huff, and I grinned as he stood up on the bed, shook himself, turned three times in the blankets, and curled up along my ribcage. I dug my fingers into the dark fur on his back, chuckling.

“Touch-ee,” Dad laughed, putting up his hands. “Fine, whatever. I’ve got a second shift, you’re on your own for dinner.”

I had just finished sighing in relief as he walked away and down the hall, when he appeared in the doorway again, scratching the back of his neck, with his eyebrows raised high on his forehead.

“By the way... put some cortisone cream on that stubble burn of yours.”

My mouth was still frozen at the beginning of forming the ‘wh’ in _what the fuck_ when Dad closed my bedroom door behind him. We waited a while, listening, and finally Derek whined and got to his feet, tucking his muzzle under my jaw and licking at it.

“Ugh, stop it,” I said, pushing his face away, but Derek growled softly until I let him continue on my cheeks and chin. By the time he was done I was laughing into his fur, hugging him around the neck. When Derek changed back, he slipped under the covers to wrap his long limbs around me, smiling too.

“Damn it, Derek.” I twisted my fingers in his hair as he kissed my chest through my t-shirt. 

“D’you want me to shave?” he asked, his hands rubbing over my ribs as he looked up at me.

I groaned, dragging my fingers against the grain of his beard. He’d look sexy clean-shaven—he’d look sexy any way, but. “If you do, Dad’ll know without a doubt that it’s been you mauling my neck the past few nights.”

“Stiles, I’m pretty sure he’s already put those pieces together if he noticed a rash and hickeys.” Derek froze then under my hands, his face switching from contentment to something akin to _guilt_.

“What is it?” I asked, carding my fingers through his hair.

“I told you I didn’t have my head on straight,” he said with a sigh, and I realized he meant _I shouldn’t have let you talk me into fucking you so quickly on the full moon_. 

“Oh _shut up_ , Derek, I’ve never been able to talk you into anything, if you’d actually had doubts about handling yourself—”

Derek shook his head, sitting up until he was kneeling on the bed, pulling the sheets around his waist. “I... I wanted to go slower than this with you.” He was all frowny. It was a look I wanted as far from our sex life as possible.

If he wanted to go slow, he shouldn’t have bought lube and condoms on the second day.

“What’s this about?” I asked as my hands fell from his skin. “I promise you, I wanted this. You were horny and gave it to me.” I paused to fight back a laugh. “If there’s thumbprints on my hips, I’ll probably press on them while I jerk off in the shower later.”

Derek looked down immediately, pulling on the waistband of my briefs. If he’d left any marks at all (with his _hands_ , anyway), they were very faint. Derek sagged and curled his body towards me.

“If this is about you making sure—if this is a Kate thing, Derek, I—”

“It’s not,” he said, shaking his head. I lifted my fingers back up to run them over his cheek, and he pressed a kiss to my palm immediately. “It’s not. I just... I’m not sure yet how to not break you. And I want you to make your own decisions.”

I hummed at him, smiling. “Okay. Well, I’ve totally been calling some of the shots. You haven’t been pulling rank or wolfing out. Quit underestimating yourself.” Derek sighed and looked up at me, and I raised my eyebrows and grinned at him until he smiled. “Now, can we rewind to ten minutes ago when I was basking in the afterglow of losing my ass virginity and you were sleeping on my chest? Because that was really nice.”

Derek slid his fingers under the hem of my shirt and over my stomach. “That was... I was your first?”

“Other than elaborate fantasies and the disgusting amount of porn I have viewed, yeah,” I said, brushing Derek’s hair away from his forehead with my fingers. “I’m a little sore, but dude, the way you practically worshipped my ass afterward—”

Groaning, Derek shoved his face into the crook of my neck and pulled the blankets over us. 

“I guess this means I’m your anchor, then,” I said, smiling into his hair as I wrapped my arms around him.

“Guess so.”

“Much healthier than anger.”

“Yes, Stiles. Now go to sleep.” 

 

Even though I wasn’t a wolf, Derek _was_ still my Alpha, and a part of me had always craved his acceptance. I had always wanted, ultimately, to please him, to be useful, to have him view me as a valuable member of the pack. His attention was intoxicating.

Watching him wander through rows of granite countertops hung up like tapestries and turn to smile and wave me over—it seems like a weird thing to get excited about, but coming from Derek, I don’t know. It made me feel like _he_ was happy, like he had a direction, and if I had any involvement with that at all, I was happy.

Having great sex with him right out of high school was icing on the cake of knowing him—well, maybe icing and like, and a hot dude in a thong jumping out of it to give you a lapdance when it’s not even your birthday accompanied by explosions that you walk away from without looking back, but.

I slid my hand into Derek’s when I reached his side, and he squeezed it, pointing to a slab of granite with his other hand. 

“Do you like this one?”

I shrugged. “You’re paying for it.”

I knew he was thinking, _that wasn’t my question_ , but what he said was, “And realistically you will probably make more actual food on it than I will.” He couldn’t cook worth a damn.

I rolled my eyes. “If you get anything with a combination of colors between beige and yellow-brown, everything will get lost on it. It could be covered in food and you’d never know,” I said. “Chicken. Bread crumbs. The blood of our enemies.”

Derek nodded seriously. “I run this pack with far too much constant vigilance to allow for that.”

“Yep. If it was Jackson’s turn to clean up the kitchen you know he’d totally skimp.”

He snorted and kissed my temple, and we moved on to the next row.

 

“Derek,” Erica started carefully at dinner, sitting on a crate in the middle of what would be the living room. “Can we get a piano?”

Boyd looked up, watching Derek’s reaction—I was waiting for it too, in case I needed to kick him in the shins. 

Derek set his slice of pizza down, wiping his mouth. “I’m assuming you mean, _Derek, since you’re going to be spending so much money on furniture anyway, will you fork over two grand more on request, and then hire someone to come over and tune it?_ ”

Erica said nothing, looking down at her hands.

“That depends,” he said finally, and answered his own question with another. “Are you good at playing?”

“I took lessons for years when I was a kid,” she said. “I... I miss it.”

“Will you paint the bedrooms and do a satisfactory job?”

Her face lit up. “Sure.”

He sighed and nodded. “Merry Christmas, then. We’ll put it in the library.” 

Erica shrieked, jumping up and throwing her arms around Derek’s neck.

“Yeah, yeah, alright, get off me,” he said, patting her on the back, and she was grinning, thanking him profusely.

As she sat back down and he picked up his slice of pizza again, I slid my hand over Derek’s thigh. He smiled at me and rubbed his greasy fingers over my scalp before he took another bite. When Boyd stage-whispered to Erica, _your parents are Jewish!_ , though, I nearly sent water out my nose.

 

Derek tagged along to the freshman orientation day for the community college with all of us, as if to sniff out the territory. After the campus tour and a too-crowded info fair—Derek wasn’t sure of the species of the Dungeons & Dragons club president—he and I broke off from the group to look for my classrooms so I wouldn’t be running blind on the first day. As we walked down the empty hall that would hold my 9 a.m. English 101 class—required but a waste of time—the permanence of our found family hit me a little harder than usual. 

“I want us to tell my dad.”

Derek raised his eyebrows, but otherwise didn’t react. “About you and me, or about... the pack?”

“All of it. Well, not _everything_ , but—”

He nodded, and pointed to a door. “But you don’t want to have to lie to him anymore.”

“Yeah.” I pulled my schedule out of my back pocket, checking the room number to the door we had stopped in front of. The lights inside were off. I turned back to Derek. “What do you think?” 

“I’m sure they’ll learn you real good here.” I frowned at him, and he smiled, wrapping his fingers around the back of my neck. “I told you we would. Let me think about the best way to go about it, okay?” I pulled Derek closer and into a kiss, and he hummed, carding his fingers through my hair. “Thank fucking god you’re eighteen,” he said, and shook his head when I slid my hands under the hem of his shirt.

“C’mon, let’s find an empty classroom to make out in. Or the library! _Sex in the stacks_ , Derek.”

He grinned, pecking my lips again. “You’re insatiable.”

“Duh.”

 

I could barely eat my dinner the next night, at the table next to Derek and across from my dad. My stomach was twisted up, I was vaguely nauseous; Derek gripped my knee under the table, and I let my eyes close, let myself breathe.

“Are you two going to tell me what’s up, or are we going to sit here painfully until after the dishes are done?” Dad said finally. “If you guys are in trouble—”

“Derek’s a werewolf, Dad,” is what I ended up opening with, even though we’d talked about leading up to it. “Back in sophomore year his psycho uncle Peter bit Scott and I had to deal with him turning and Derek helped Scott learn how to control himself, and then I joined their pack because I’m smarter than all of them, and Derek’s the alpha now because we killed Peter after he murdered Laura and a bunch of other people and the house we’re building is going to be full of wolves when it’s finished, and everyone’s going to community college so they can stick around and do wolf things because we’re a family, even Jackson, and Allison’s family chops werewolves in half in their spare time so _that_ was really bad and—” 

“Stiles,” Derek said sharply.

“What?”

“Let me.”

I sighed and nodded. “Please, you have the floor.”

Derek folded his hands on the table in front of him, taking a deep breath in. “The animal attacks weren’t mountain lions,” he said. “They were my uncle Peter on a rampage, after he took the rightful Alpha status from my sister and turned Scott into a werewolf. I—I came back here after my family was burned alive during a pack gathering, after I gave Kate Argent the information she needed to destroy us. She was a hunter, just like the rest of her family, but she broke the code when she murdered people who had never harmed humans. I killed Peter and became the Alpha, and we protect the community and ourselves from things that most people think are mythological. Stiles became one of the few people I trust.”

Dad’s plate was pushed away from him by the end of that, and he looked up. “How exactly is my son involved in this?”

Derek met my eyes. I was turned toward him in my chair, my fingers on his thigh. “Stiles has been our researcher for the past two years. He’s a key member of my pack now, and has saved my life more than once. He’s been in danger and kept secrets out of loyalty to me and to Scott and our pack, and I’m sorry that it meant he pulled away from you. I know the importance of family and I don’t want him to have to lie to you anymore.”

“And I’m his boyfriend, too,” I added.

Derek nodded. “The house we’re rebuilding is going to be a den for my pack, the only family I’ve got now. We’re safer and stronger together.”

“So you,” Dad started. “You can change into a werewolf.”

“Would you like for me to show you?”

He gestured to Derek with one hand, choking out a laugh. “Please.”

I smiled as I watched him grow mutton chops, watched his eyebrows pull down, his eyes flash, and his claws and canines extend. 

Dad was resting his head in one hand now, like he had graduated from shock to _I must be dreaming_. “Wow. Okay.”

“The wolf that was in my room the other day was Derek, Dad,” I said. “And—”

“You said he’s your boyfriend,” Dad said abruptly. “How long has that been going on?”

Derek and I looked at each other. “Only a couple of weeks, actually,” I said, and Derek nodded his agreement. “It’s... been a long time coming, though.”

“This explains... so much.” Dad pushed his chair back from the table and sighed. “Jesus Christ, Stiles. I can’t believe you went through all of that by yourself.”

“Dad, I—I wasn’t—”

“Yes you were, because we used to talk about everything. You were so afraid—does Melissa know?”

I nodded. “The night at the station, with Matt, he changed in front of her.”

Dad was scrubbing his hand over his face. “Jesus Christ,” he said again. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“Listen to pack business before you arrest him again?” I suggested.

“That was _your_ fault, Stiles,” Derek said, rolling his eyes. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” I admitted, smiling.

 

When the doors got delivered and the guys from Home Depot began bringing them in, Isaac started cracking up, and I took that as my cue to run and hide behind my car. 

“STILES!”

Of course, when you’re (half-heartedly) hiding from a werewolf, hunkering down behind your Jeep is not gonna cut it, and soon I was being pushed up against its side. 

“What did you do?” Derek wanted to know.

“You don’t have opposable thumbs!”

“Goddamn it, Stiles.”

“It’s only on the back door.” Derek huffed and puffed, and I smoothed my hands up his chest, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I love you?” I tried, smiling. I knew it would be easier to apologize for this than it would have been to ask permission.

Derek grumbled and nipped under my jaw. “You’re lucky it’s mutual, asshole.”

There was, of course, a large flap for a dog on the door that would lead out into the backyard. I snickered to myself as he stalked away, pausing only when he turned to glare at me.

He’d use it when no one else was home, I just knew it.

 

Dad came over to help us paint the exterior during a stretch of sunny days. 

Painting was one job that we as a pack were doing entirely ourselves—we laid out drop cloths everywhere and went over the purpose of primer and argued its necessity and mixed and mixed and mixed.

Yes, primer was necessary.

Ladders were also necessary, and a hazard for me—I was in charge of the aluminum trays and cleaning the brushes.

Rollers and paint hands were a farce waiting to happen, and when Derek got too stressed I put a stripe of grey-green across his cheek with my finger.

“Aww, it brings out your eyes, Derek,” Erica said, and luckily she was up on a ladder.

Dad stood back for a while and just watched us all interact. Scott had given him a toothy grin when we’d shown up, and Dad had groaned loudly, shaking his head, patting Scott on the back. “Damn, son, put those away.”

Before we taped off all of the glass and trim, I took Dad around to the backyard and showed him the bay windows into the kitchen. He smiled and squeezed my shoulder.

“It’s a fine house, kid.”

He took us out for Chinese that night, and everyone scattered afterward—Erica and Boyd ran off to make out somewhere, and Isaac went home with Scott to annihilate some Covenant alien lifeforms. Cuddles were on my agenda—Dad went up to bed when we got home since he had to get up at four, and I sank into the living room couch with Derek.

I really liked letting him manhandle me to his liking when I was tired.

“I was thinking, when all the construction is done, I should set some wards around the property,” I said as he pulled me in to settle against his chest. 

Derek nodded into the back of my neck. “Good. Just make sure it knows who belongs.”

“Yeah, of course. S’not like I’m gonna mountain ash the place.” I traced my fingers over Derek’s arms, closing my eyes, warm and surrounded by him. The next part felt extremely domestic to admit, but I had justified it enough to myself—“I was thinking about an herb garden too. Going to Deaton and the grocery store every time Lydia wants some remedy or whatever is annoying. The salespeople always ask me what in the world I’m cooking.” 

Derek snickered. I bared my neck for him, humming as he leaned down to kiss under my ear, teasing the skin with his teeth. 

 

I brought Derek with me to meet Glinda for lunch during the last week of summer break. Derek had interacted with very few of the pack’s human friends apart from Danny and significant others—it felt strange and really good to introduce him to someone new.

“Holy shit,” she said as we stood under the awning of the restaurant, after hugging me hello and shaking Derek’s hand. “Honey, you be glad I’m a lesbian, because your boyfriend—I—what _is_ this.”

I snorted and elbowed Derek as he opened the door for us. 

We had sandwiches and sweet potato fries at a table together like normal people. At least where Derek was concerned, the whole werewolf thing made ‘normal people’ kind of a façade, but I think that was more of a personal choice or based on his introversion than anything the pack felt particularly forced into as a species or by association.

Glinda told us about the philosophy classes she had been taking over the summer, and as she and Derek explained Plato’s _Allegory of the Cave_ to me—something about shadow puppets and chains and unknown prisons, rejecting true reality—I sat there smiling at him stupidly.

I knew this was just a novelty, just a blip, but it felt like a glimpse into what we could become, what we might be in a few years if we didn’t die first. I wanted to find out where he’d read Plato, I wanted him to tell me about riding the subway with Laura and what he did with his dad on Saturday afternoons when he was a kid.

I wanted him to let me drag him on outings and not feel like he had to pretend he really did hate being there.

Maybe I could take him to Jungle for something besides attempting to tranquilize a man-lizard.

Maybe it would just take time.

 

The house was finished two days before Derek’s birthday and two weeks before Thanksgiving. All us fresh college meat had started at the CC, mostly just helping out on weekends when we could, and letting Derek do most of the oversight of the small crews he hired to do electrical installation and the full kitchen.

Scott, Erica, Isaac and I helped Derek pick out most of the furniture. There was an overstuffed sectional for the living room, and big coffee tables and leather recliners and a dining room table and a pool table—when Scott begged for it, he used the excuse that it would improve the wolves’ gentle touch and knowing their own strength or some similar type of bullshit. We bought shelves and an entertainment center and a widescreen TV and a DVD player—Derek’s _what the fuck is a blu-ray?_ in Best Buy cracked me up. 

We bought plates and glassware and platters and silverware and pots and pans—and yes, an upright piano for Erica. Boyd wanted an Xbox, and Isaac, well. He was happy to have a new home, but he wanted a record player. We perused some workout equipment as well, but didn’t have the trunk space to make any decisions immediately.

Each of the beta wolves had their own room on the second floor. The attic was largely Derek’s, and by extension, mine. We had access to the widow’s walk—though I felt really icky calling it that—through a trapdoor, and the library would get stocked eventually, probably by me.

We picked out the bed together on a Tuesday.

“We’re gonna need to christen this.”

I fucked him into it on a Wednesday, his legs around my waist, his arms around my shoulders, holding me to him. He whined and went limp when I bit down on his neck, which was hot as all hell and something we’d _definitely_ be revisiting. I made a mental note to ask how he felt about dirty talk and powerplay— _c’mon, Derek, let go, let me take care of you, you don’t have to be in control all the time_ —but forgot about it as soon as he arched his back, moaned my name and came all over himself. I’d remember eventually.

I couldn’t think of a time I had ever seen him so willingly vulnerable. It was fantastic.

 

On the day Derek moved out of my guest room and into his new house, he thanked my father formally for his hospitality and discretion. I think it might have been the most awkwardly heartwarming thing I’d ever seen, on the parts of both Derek and my dad.

I paused in the middle of bullshitting a paper to help him pack up. He left that hoodie conspicuously on my dresser, and I smiled, not mentioning it as I checked the bathroom to make sure he got everything else. It wasn’t like it would be so difficult for me to return anything he left behind, or for him to leave things just so he’d have an excuse to come back later, but I felt like I should at least pretend to offer assistance. 

I’d been sleeping in one of his t-shirts that week and hadn’t mustered up any motivation to get dressed yet, and when he dumped his bag in the hall and wrapped his arms around me, Derek took a deep inhale that made me shiver.

“You coming by tonight?” he asked. I nodded into his neck as his hands settled around my hips. “What’re you worried about?” So observant. 

“Whether my dad’ll eat anything remotely healthy after I move in with you.”

Derek smiled and kissed my forehead. “He’s a grown man, Stiles.”

“Yeah, a grown man who’d live on nothing but grease and carbs without me pushing the veggies,” I said, spreading my hands over his chest. “I just—I need him to be around, you know?”

Derek nodded, his thumbs rubbing under the hem of my—his—shirt. “Yeah.”

“I’ll share him with you if you’d like.”

Humming, Derek pitched forward slightly to kiss under my ear. “Don’t change out of this shirt.” 

I smirked as he bent to pick up his duffel again. “You didn’t say the magic word.”

 

Several pieces of Derek’s old furniture were still in my garage—I found them again when I went out there to find a broom. A lot of the stuff was blackened and dirty or needed reupholstering, or both, but he must’ve decided to hold onto it for a reason. He and Laura were together for years before she was killed. She must have had belongings. 

We needed to fill the house up, make it our own, but I didn’t want to forget who Derek built it for. I wanted Derek to be able to see his family when he looked around our new house, see things that belonged to his parents. His mother’s antique vanity could be made glorious again, but I couldn’t tell what shade of brown it had been originally.

“Everything Laura had besides the car, everything we kept, it’s all in a storage unit,” he said when I asked. “It... it all smells like her.”

He took me to see it, and I could tell as we arrived at the facility that he almost wanted to just let me go in by myself.

The Hales had beautiful things. Derek hung back by a few feet, letting me poke around. His mother’s jewelry was all there, safe in a box still, black garbage bags full of clothing—Laura’s—and a box full of framed photos. 

A violin case, a bundle of men’s shirts, some hand-painted Chinese-style soup spoons.

“I could make some _wicked_ cornbread in this,” I said, holding up a cast-iron skillet, the kind that was obviously a hundred years old and better for it. I felt his fingers slide around my shoulder, and I leaned into him, wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Mom used to substitute cream corn for most of the milk,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the dull shine of the black metal.

I chuckled, shaking my head, and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“What?” he asked, frowning.

“So did mine,” I said, handing the pan to him.

 

The wards I set went over pretty well. They certainly took some trial and error and adjusting—what felt like walking through 3M security gates with headphones on to me nearly gave the wolves a headache.

By the time I had perfected them, the boundaries around our property looked like a water mirage on hot asphalt up close, but disappeared into the leaves and sky after a few paces. It was a bubble, designed to accept any specific people—the pack was on that list, obviously, along with informed parents and friends. It could also alarm us to the presence of those we tolerated for strategic reasons, and keep out people we didn’t like, as well as those with malintent. I wasn’t sure how that worked, but it didn’t react when the wolves were out sparring and someone crossed and re-crossed on accident.

I wasn’t telling them the incantation in case locking each other out became a prank.

Thanksgiving was a kind of housewarming party, and when my dad showed up, as well as Melissa and of course, the pack, it was obvious who could tell how much sex had happened in this house already and who couldn’t. Lysol can’t clean everything.

Dad was standing in the kitchen holding a casserole dish and a lamp, right where Derek had fucked me over the counter the night before. I bit my lip hard, fighting laughter as Derek held me securely against his chest, hiding his smile in my hair.

The faces grinning around us were practically blinding. Issac was blinking back tears, and when the pack finally tackled us to the floor and I let out a yelp, I heard Dad laugh above their voices. He’d have no trouble fitting in.

Derek, on the other hand, would always be a challenge, but I could handle it.

 

_  
“I smell like your_ mate? _” I asked, eyebrows raised. “Have I always?”_

_He nodded and groaned softly, rubbing his eyes. “It presents itself differently now, but you used to scare me so badly, when we met, that you were there reminding me of what I couldn’t have,_ wasn’t ready for _, and you were so fragile, and so young.”_

_“I wasn’t_ that _young.”_

_“Your father’s the_ Sherriff _, Stiles. But—I don’t know.” Derek sighed. “Everything in me knew to protect and depend on you, but I couldn’t allow myself—I couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.”_

_I studied him carefully. “Does that mean we owe this to your romantic spidey senses, or would I still have won you over with my natural charm?”_

_Derek’s hand brushed over my cheek and into my hair. “It’s... I know that maybe to you that sounds—” He sighed again. “I didn’t really get the mates talk from my parents, but I know that regardless of pack rank, they saw each other as equals. Maybe I’m biased, but you’re—” Derek’s eyes closed as he inhaled, and when they opened again, they glowed red. “You feel like warmth and color, familiarity, determination. If you weren’t such a stubborn shit, I might have tried to fight it until you could finish college. All my instincts—it’s calming, but so distracting, Stiles.”_

_Derek paused, his fingers tracing over my chest, and I waited, watching him._

_“You straighten me out and fill in my blanks, there—there isn’t another way for me to see you,” he said softly, his head cocking to the side a little. With the alpha eyes, it would have been unnerving if I didn’t know him so well. “This is all I know.” He smiled then, his irises fading back to green. “Although for a while there I thought you were so obnoxious that I had no idea how to find you sexy.”_

_I scoffed at him in false hurt and turned onto my back. “I resent that. You know you wanted this bod.”_

_Derek chuckled, pulling himself up on one elbow and leaning in to kiss my shoulder. “I definitely had to warm up to the idea of being with anyone or having any kind of future before I could even think about falling for you.”_

_I hummed at Derek, and as his fingers ran over my chest and ribcage, I lifted mine to his cheek. “Remember when you said I was too good for you?”_

_“Still true,” Derek grumbled, leaning into my hand._

_“All I need is for you to be good for me.”_

_The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I guess that depends on your definition of ‘good.’”  
_


End file.
